2014-06-01 - Fire and Files in the Psych Ward
The Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx is where Charles Szasz has found himself, this lovely Sunday afternoon. Despite Tot's constant barbs and quips on Charlie's mental faculties, he's not here for the Behavioral Health. Actually, Charlie's not here as Charlie. The man with no face, or the No Face Guy, is here because no self respecting, law abiding citizen should be here to do what he's come here to do. The Behavioral Health area, on the upper floor of the medical facility, was difficult to break into. It required a little assault and battery, tresspassing, destruction of property and theft. One can understand why Charlie insists on keeping his face covered during these endeavors. After all that hardwork, The Question finds himself in a dimly lit office space of the Unit director. Clearly the unit director doesn't work on the weekends. The Question is rifling through a file cabinet. At this point, webslinging on past outside Spider-Man is on a patrol. He's got summer classes to catch up wtih, and that means having to do a report over on multicellular transformative biological interchange, and otherwise Peter is not qutie thrilled. Hence, patrol. Landing on a ledge outside the rooftop, Spidey scans the ground over on the road below, looking for anything amiss then and keeping his webshooters handy. Hoping this is a quiet night. The Faceless Vigilante is pretty engrossed in his current temporary vocation. Gloved fingers perform their deft dance as he thumbs through pages and files of information. Q is skimming so quickly it would be clear that he's looking for something specific. Unfortunately for Q, that something isn't hospital security. A pair of men come into the dimly lit office and catch No Face red handed. Their arrival goes undetected by Q until they've come up behind him and grabbed him. The Question struggles but his arms are clamped down behind him by a big, burly man wearing coveralls. If this man is hospital security, he should re-evaluate his opinion of hired private security. These guys could be accurately described as 'goons'. One of the two burly security officers shuffle Charlie towards the office window. The second security goon pulls open the blinds, unlatches the window and swings it open. No words had been uttered if you don't count grunts of effort as words. The Security Goon who opened the window mutters in the gravelly baritone of a man who doesn't listen to his own Doc about smoking, "The Doctor's not acceptin' office visits. You're goin' to have to fly." The first security goon continues to direct Q towards the window much to the Faceless Man's efforts to convince them that it isn't his destination of choice. As the Question goes to take a tumble out the window, which rapidly gets Spider-Man's attention. He's not sure what the man is - whether he's a thief or a hero, but no one's going todie on his watch. Firing out a webline from the opposite end, Spider-Man desperately calculates angles as he drops, getting himself even over wtih the tumbling Question then and arcing along and firing out another webline, managing to catch it on the top of a nearby building then as he held Question close to him, making sure the stop wouldn't have a solid -yank- on the end of it. "You know, I'm told ti's traditional to give a kiss at this sorta thing, but I think in this case we're allowed to drop that." Glancing over at the open window and jerking his thumb over at the men, "Friends of your's? And you didn't make a splat down on the ground like they wanted you to?" This is normally the ponit where they'll be pulling out Tommyguns to shoot at him. Out the window the Question goes, apparently he's easily out muscled by the big, burly security guard. A couple of feet into his descent is where Q loses his hat. A couple of more feet and the waist belt of his trenchcoat has become undone and it starts to flap from the wind sheer. Luckily for the Question, his date with Destiny is averted by Spider-Man's fortuitous arrival and act. Once on the adjacent rooftop, the Question straitens his trenchcoat's shoulders, adjusts the fit of his gloves and reties the belt around his waist. He comments to Spider-Man's quip, "You don't want a kiss from me. No lips." Once in a more comfortable state, Q runs a glove through his hair and looks at the Wallcrawler, "Those fellows work for a Doctor I am investigating. My short trip through Bronx Airspace is indicative that I'm headed in the right direction." He turns his head to regard the window he flew out of. Peter Parker nods over, "Well, so long as the right direction isn't downwards, in which case you might have to change your name over to Splat. And really, I'm going to have to voice my opinion that this city already has enough of a waste disposal problem without people and garbage being tossed out windows." With that, Peter glances down at the window you had just come out of, and quickly did some calculations in his head. "Hang on!" Going to grab at Question yet again, going to take a tuck and tumble through the air, firing off antoher webline to try and rocket the two over through the open window once more, hopefully before the mooks inside could take the opportunity to dump anything else. "Well, yeah, down wasn't the direction I was implyin-" The faceless man is interrupted with Spider-Man grabbing him yet again. Through Q's pseudoderm man, one would note he has opened his mouth but not words are issued as he's hefted over the edge of the building and through the air. Through the window and back in the office, it is lit up a bit better than Q would remember. The dim lights from the window and interior are joined by the light flickering of a bunch of glowing embers. Fires have been started and they are gradually growing from baby fires to big, adult fires. The Question utters a couple of choice words that would otherwise be 'bleeped' in the media. He gestures back to the window as he hurries over to the file cabinet he was at previously, "Thanks for the lift. Get out of here." Inside the doorway which leads to the hall beyond, the same big, burly men arrive; jugs of ether clutched in their meaty hands. Peter Parker glances over at the men, "HEy, I'm relatively sure that this isn't a New York Health System approved manner of taking care of disposing of papers." Hands balled up over into fists then and letting Q drop down over and making himself the bigger target, "So, who are you guys working for? Doctor Evil? Doctor Bong? Ricchard Simmons? I mean, really, you guys sorta are at the low end of the mook and totem poll. Or you're just new to this sorta thing. And shouldn't one of you be screaming 'It's Spider-Man, stop him?'?" The Question rips open the file cabinet he was previously perusing and tries to get back to the spot he was at before he was rudely interrupted. Luckily, the added flickering lights of the growing flames is making it easier for Q to make out the contents of the various pages and files. The Question answers Spidey, "Johnson. The doctor is Johnson. I wasn't impressed either." The two mooks squeeze through the door in unison and uncap their jugs of either. They start to hastily spread it around while Pete is mouthing off, "Oh, hey-" One of them states, "No Face found Spider-Man." The other big, burly man points a half-empty jug at Spider-Man, "He's kind of tiny. Thought he was bigger?" The other mook shrugs, "He'll burn just the same." One of the half empty jugs is lobbed towards one of the growing fires... clearly the intent is to make it explode in an ethery fireball. Peter Parker glances over, "And likely wtih a name like that niether was his missus." As the jugs were spread around, Spider-Man did a quick mental equation and got 'BOOM' as he went to fire otu two quick web bolts through the air, trying to cover the tossed things over with gunk then to make sure that they couldn't add to the fire. "So, what do they call you guys? Little thug one and little thug two?" With fire, everything has an added element of danger to it, especially when the bad guys are trying to make it worse. So Peter was trying to make them try and attack him rather than focus on spreading it. The half-empty jugs of ether are intercepted and their trajectories are changed by the addition of webbing and the force of pull. The containers of ether skip and skitter across the floor and, for the moment, their contents are harmlessly spread on a portion of the floor not immediately threatened with burning. Spider-Man gets his wish when the two mooks beat feet towards the Webslinger. They charge at them in a manner indicative of a past, possibly collegiate level, of playing Football. Their arms are spread out and one's looking to tackle Spidey up high and the other's got his sights set on Spidey's legs. Meanwhile, The Question continues to go through the files that are his interest. Finally he pulls out what looks like an entire ream of paper sandwiched between manilla flaps. The Faceless Man grunts with the accomplishment, "This is more like it." Two mooks charging at him. He can deal wtih this. Judging where the mooks were racing at him, Spidey hummed, "One of these things is not like the other, one of these things just doesn't belong!" Letting his Spider-Sense guide him, going to leap -between- the two men, hopefully without being hit then, waiting for them to topple over as they went to try and whirl around to face him again wtih all of thier mometnum leading them forwards, hopefully aided by him having a quick bit of extra time to web their feet together. The big burly men in the hospital uniforms are many things. There's the aforementioned big. You can't forget the burly. And they are certainly masculine. But what else? There's got to be more to them than those descriptors. Fear not; Spider-Man's adding a couple more wrinkles to them. These wrinkles come in the form of being surprised, annoyed and completely ineffective. Their tackling abilities prove limited when neither of them connect with the Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man. They are both surprised and annoyed at this realization. They crumpled to the ground after throwing themselves, seemingly, at it instead of Spidey. They're slow to get up because the webbed feet caused them to slam hard, jaw first, into the tile floor. The Question tucks the file under one arm and with the other he wipes beads of sweat from his pseudoderm covered forehead. He calls out to Spider-Man, "Time for fresh air. I have what I need." At that point, Spidey quickly considers then, looks over at the webbed men, and then goes to whacvk his fist over on the fire alarm then. Which would start hosing down the place with fire retardant foam to make sure that the otherwise spread ether didn't spread any further and risk setting off something worse. Spidey went to grab over to Q by the jacket, "Yeah, let's get going before LIttle Thug One and Little Thug Two realize that their boss probably isn't gonig to pay them after this and that they're going to not want to be here when he monologues to them." Going to swing out the window with Q in tow. Out the window they will go. The temperature change is significant as only when Q is outside does he realize how quickly those fires were growing and spreading. The fire retardant foam, however, will make sure the other files and any computers in that office are not completely lost. Wherever Spidey drops them off, Q will perform the same little ritual as before; Adjust his coat's shoulders and gloves and re-tie the belt of his trenchcoat around his waist. Words of insincere appreciation will be uttered at Spidey both during and after the flight out the window; During the flight those words can be summarized as 'Thanks for not dropping me' and after the landing as 'Thanks for keeping them off my back'. Peter Parker shakes his head, "So, just what were those guys after?" Spidey expects the fires will be dealt with quickly, and the fire departmetn should hopefully get to the place soon if there's anything leftover. "Or scratch that, what were they trying to get rid of so quickly then but that wasn't important enough to have someone with a brain taking care of it?" The Question pulls the file out from under his arm. He clearly had a vice-like squeeze on the file as he flew through the air. He holds the folder in one hand, opens it and thumbs through it for a moment. He answers Pete, "Covering Doc Johnson's tracks, I imagine. Medical Device and pharmaceutical requisitions for that Hospital Unit along with cooresponding inventory counts." He looks up from the folder, closes it and slides it back under his arm. He elaborates, "I imagine they will not match and I will have more leads to follow. I suppose those individuals were attempting to be "helpful" to Doc Johnson by destroying his office." Peter Parker nods, "Nice. In my day and age they'd put those kind of things online. I guess you've got to giv eit to the old hands when it comes to corruption and money laundering. They have a rea lbig file somewhere and Al Capone's accountant ready to testify on the squiggle of it." Glancing down over at the smoke coming from the window, "And with luck Doctor Johnson will in turn do something dumb to cover his steps further that otherwise will get some attention over from some of the bigwigs as well." "Old ways don't mean bad ways." The Question says with a shrug of his shoulders. While shrugging, he raises a hand to cup the bottom of the file so as it doesn't slip and fall due to the gesture. The Faceless Man says, "I've got to comb through this information and see where it points me next. Thank you for having good aim and spatial awareness." The Faceless Vigilante turns away from the Webhead and clearly has every intention of going his separate way. Peter Parker gives a wave, "Got it. And let's see how Mister Jameson figures out how to pin this one over on me. At this point it's half the fun of being in this job." Spidey went to shoot out a webline to then continue the rest of his patrol after having given a wave to Vic.